


five times she didn't ask her out (and one time she did)

by saltyparabolae



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-05 17:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11583165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyparabolae/pseuds/saltyparabolae
Summary: Erin Gilbert is a professional paranormal pornographer. Jillian Holtzmann is a weirdo with a nuke. Maybe they were meant to be.





	1. the first two times

**Author's Note:**

> you can thank my dear friend, tumblr user clinterstellar, for the ghost puns :)

Erin Gilbert, PhD, unfazed observer of ghosts and hardcore pornography alike, couldn’t help but stare as the woman walked into the DMV. The woman in question, clad in an outfit involving four collars, a necktie, and two pairs of goggles, looked like she belonged at Comic-Con, not in a government building. And yet, the easy confidence with which she carried herself suggested that she felt right at home here, here being, Erin noted, walking directly towards her.

“Like what you see?” the woman asked, winking through her double lenses.

“Um, hi, Dr. Erin Gilbert, director of cryptid erotica with Ectorgasm,” she rushed to introduce herself. “And you are?”

“Jillian Holtzmann, newly single, unemployed, and 100% jazzed to appear in a special. As a cryptid, that is.” She cocked an eyebrow.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Holtzmann, but we’re not hiring right now. Um, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go take my renewal test.” She stood, straightened her tweed skirt and matching bowtie, and began walking towards the desk.

“Wait!” Jillian called. “It’s Dr. Holtzmann.”

***

Friday at 8:30 pm found Erin tidying her office and preparing to go home. This week’s work had been particularly rough; there had been an incident involving a ghost and a vampire that somehow yielded 15 minutes of useable material and nearly four hours of cleanup. Naturally, she was looking forward to unwinding over the weekend.

“Dr. Gilbert?” an intern knocked on her door, interrupting her reflection on how best to elongate the footage so as to not break a contract.

“Yes, Lily?” she asked, trying her best to make intimidating eye contact. If there was one thing she didn’t want to do, it was work at all before 9 o’clock Monday morning.

Alas. “I was doing inventory in the warehouse and it looks like we’re almost out of specialty condoms. I would go get more myself, but seeing as my plane leaves in an hour and a half…” 

“Understood,” Erin sighed. “I’ll take care of it.” For such a high-paying job, the level of disorganization at all levels could be disorienting. Still, Erin knew she had nothing better to do with what remained of her evening. Wine could wait until she got home.

Erin was stopped at a traffic light quite close to her supplier when she saw something bizarre out of the corner of her eye. A car, two lanes over and three lengths behind her, appeared to have a cartoon ghost painted on the side of it. She knew better than to assume that what she saw on top was in fact what she thought it was, but the number of physics courses she’d taken in college had trained her to recognize a nuke when she saw it. Erin rationalized that it must be a hallucination; after all, she’d been working such long hours lately and with such odd material that she couldn’t trust herself.

The car took off as soon as the light turned green and Erin was certain that she recognized Jillian Holtzmann in the driver’s seat.

This was not the time for distractions, however. Her goal was to get home as quickly as possible so as to not miss the new Ancient Aliens episode. If there was a nuke riding around New York, surely somebody else could take care of it.

However, when she arrived at the distributors’, it became apparent that the two cars had followed the same trajectory. One had arrived much faster than the other, though, as the parked car was the only sign of Jillian in sight. (Unless it wasn’t Jillian. That was possible too, of course. And it’s not like Erin was hoping to run into her again. That would be irrational. She didn’t know her.)

Hurrying into the building, Erin quickly confirmed that it had, in fact, been Jillian. And today’s getup was just as dramatic as last time’s, if not even more so. She didn’t look quite as short in her furry, stiletto slippers and neatly spiked, multicoloured mohawk. 

“Howdy!” she saluted from across the room when she saw Erin, a grin widening on her face.

“Hello,” Erin greeted her, quickly walking past in order to find her specialty goods.

“What brings you here?” Jillian asked. “Unless we’ve got the same,” she paused for emphasis, “problem.” A smirk replaced the earnest grin.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I need to pick up protection for our actors. Ejacuplasm easily penetrates normal condoms, hence the necessity of these,” Erin explained.

“Wicked,” Jillian grinned once more. “So we do have the same problem.”

This time it was Erin who raised an eyebrow.

“Ever since I accidentally-on-purpose shoved some radioactive waste up my hoo-ha,” Jillian began, clearly revelling in the look she received, “my natural – well, unnatural – fluids have burned right through normal barriers. Hence the necessity of these,” she held up a package claiming to contain five hundred ‘Surgical Strength Dental Damnations.’ “I think they’re made of lead. I’m not sure they’re 100% effective – the sample size is too small to effectively analyze at the moment. I have volunteer positions open right now if you’re interested in helping advance the future of science.”

Erin told herself that she couldn’t possibly be the first girl to have heard that line, and she resolved that she wasn’t going to be the first to agree to it.

“No thanks,” she said flatly. “I need to get home before Ancient Aliens starts.”

“Niiiiiice,” Jillian drawled. “I too have a date with Giorgio, but there are three-way possibilities…”

Erin declined, but couldn’t stop herself from smiling nonetheless.

As she drove home, she thought about how amazing it was that in a city of eight and a half million people, she’d already crossed paths with this weirdo twice in under a week. Hopefully that was the last time; she didn’t think she could bear to reject her again.


	2. the next two times

With Lily out for the week, Erin found herself assuming many more menial responsibilities than usual. She knew she didn’t have to, but she’d always been one for the feeling of altruistic satisfaction she found in doing others’ work. She also found it oddly cathartic to publicly carry around the kind of supplies her admittedly niche job required.

So when she found out that it was time for the quarterly IKEA run, she jumped at the opportunity to spend her day selecting and assembling furniture. Erin adored IKEA. She loved the shopping experience; she loved how gay she felt putting tables together. Hell, she even loved the food.

Erin took her time on the shopping run, but it still felt like it was over too soon. Company pickup truck packed, she returned to the food market, because to her, no IKEA trip was complete without a can of cider and jar of Scandinavian pickles to sustain her the drive back to Manhattan.

“Can I help you?” a familiar voice sounded behind her. Startled, Erin jumped around only to find Jillian standing next to her, wheeling an entire pallet of lingonberry jam.

“What are you doing here?” Erin sputtered. She was excited to see Jillian again so soon, but she was starting to wonder if she had gained a stalker or if this was just the universe fucking with her.

Jillian pointed to her yellow vest. “When they figured out I was living here, they offered me a job. Apparently I know the store like nobody’s business.” She shrugged.

“But – I thought you were a doctor,” Erin began. “Unless you were just trying to look impressive for a girl at the DMV.”

“Nah, I am, the market’s just not really interested in slightly radioactive experimental nuclear engineers at the moment. But I love IKEA and IKEA loves me, so we’re all good. What brings you here, anyway? Lunchtime…” she squinted at the jar in Erin’s hand, “pickles? There’s gotta be a story there!” she smiled.

“Actually, I’m here on company business. My line of work requires a lot of cheap, easily wiped off furniture,” Erin laughed. “I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Boy, can I ever!” Jillian exclaimed. “Although I’m not sure our pieces are the best for that. Industrial-grade metal products would probably be more durable. I can weld them for you if you’re interested.”

“That’s a very nice offer, Dr. Holtzmann, but as I’ve told you before, we’re not hiring at the moment,” Erin said flatly.

“Oh, I’ll do it pro bono,” Jillian replied, “both for your workplace and our home.”

“It was nice to see you again,” Erin smiled, “but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Fine,” Jillian said. “Let me know if you change your mind.” 

On her way back to the warehouse, Erin wondered what Jillian could have meant by that. She didn’t even know her number; how on earth was she supposed to let her know if she did change her mind? Which she wouldn’t, she reminded herself. After all, Erin was a successful career woman with a stable life, and Jillian was a broke postdoc who couldn’t have a conversation without mentioning her self-imposed radiation condition.

Erin sighed. How many more times was this going to happen? She wasn’t getting any younger and she had yet to find anyone who made her smile like Jillian already did. She had other concerns, though, like how she was going to shoot a scene between Bigfoot and a human actress without hurting any of her staff. Bigfoot was nice, she just didn’t know how not to hurt herself or others. Jillian, it appeared, was much the same way.

***

Erin couldn’t remember the last time she’d faced this much chaos in a fortnight. Between her workplace literally blowing up, and then her faucet at home spontaneously ceasing to work – not to mention the odd feeling she got every time she ran into or thought about the six-eyed engineer – she was wiped. Yet she knew she had to take care of her faucet before she could do anything else, so off to Home Depot she was.

It had been years since Erin had given her apartment any attention. Usually, all her time there was spent on her couch, watching conspiracy theory documentaries or trolling websites for ideas for Ectorgasm’s next great special. Often times, she fell asleep on the couch before she could haul herself to bed. 

As such, it occurred to her that maybe doing a few quick repairs on the apartment wouldn’t be such a bad idea. It might take her mind off of work and whatever the hell was happening with her personal life, and it never hurt to have a nicer living space. Making the rest of her apartment more inviting could help her become more creative, or something like that. She definitely didn’t care about what other people thought of her space, especially not Jillian. That was absolutely the least of her worries, she told herself.

So she made her shopping list: new lightbulbs, because heaven knew enough had burned out without being replaced, and dimness because of broken bulbs didn’t count as “ambiance”; a new faucet for her sink; a new shower head, because the old one leaked and not because Erin had any ideas about other people ever being in her bathroom, especially not other people named Jillian; new towels, because she didn’t think other people – or herself, she chided, this was of course exclusively about herself – deserved to accidentally wipe mildew onto their bodies; and new anything else that caught her eye and could possibly make her place any more appealing and habitable.

With so many tasks to keep her mind busy, Erin headed out, determined to load her Forester with materials until she couldn’t remember anything except how to conduct basic home repairs.

It went well, at least at first. She found some towels on sale that she thought would look quite nice in her bathroom, as well as a showy new shower head and she even treated herself to a new toilet seat. (The old one had multiple large cracks, and she found herself scared it would fall apart any time she sat down on it.) Of course, it took some deliberation; she wasn’t entirely familiar with all the different features a toilet seat could have, after all. Just as soon as she had placed the box in her cart, she caught a glimpse of something that she could only describe as odd.

A cart, completely full of what appeared to be wire flamingos, flanked by disco lights and frolicking in a shopping cart’s worth of tropical plants, was propelling itself directly towards her.

“What on earth?” she mumbled to herself before noticing that rainbow Crocs pushing the cart was the source of the movement.

Of course. “Dr. Holtzmann,” Erin greeted the cart before she even saw its user’s face.

“Erin Gilbert, PhD! Just the woman I was hoping to find!” Jillian’s face lit up.

“It’s nice to see you, too, but,” she gestured to the cart, “what in the name of hell are you doing with this little installation?”

“Oh, it’s for our apartment!” Jillian said, as if that were the obvious conclusion.

“Our?” Erin began. “I thought you were newly single.” She wasn’t sure why she remembered that detail and even less sure as to why she brought it up.

“Yes, silly, yours and mine! I mean, you’re clearly here for the same reason – that toilet seat model’s my favorite, by the way. Good taste.” She winked, somehow knowing exactly how Erin would react.

Sputtering. Lots of it.

“No–work–busy–not dating–you don’t know me–are you stalking me, Dr. Holtzmann?” Erin finally gasped.

“What?” Jillian’s face fell. “Of course not; that’d be creepy as hell, and you’re your own woman, babe. It’s just that fate puts certain people in our lives for a reason, and I knew from the moment in the DMV that fate put me in your path that day on purpose. And when I saw you again buying specialty prophylactics, and then showing up out of the blue at my work and living space, well, I figured it couldn’t be a coincidence. It’s a big city; if we’ve got that much in common, how could we go wrong?”

One detail stuck out to Erin, and it wasn’t the part where Jillian explained her philosophy and basically asked her out.

“You still live in an IKEA?”

“Well, yeah,” Jillian nodded, “at least for now. If that’s a proposition–“

“It’s not,” Erin clarified.

“Let me know when you change your mind,” Jillian said, tipped her top cap, and continued on her merry way.

Erin could only stare and wonder where the flamingos were going in the meantime, or, well, not in the meantime, since Jillian was most certainly not moving in with her, which she supposed raised the question of where the flamingos were going, ever. Maybe the IKEA showroom was gaining a new display. Maybe she ought to visit sometime to find out.

Or maybe not. Maybe she should continue living on her own, bored and dissatisfied with every condition of her living space (and lifestyle) apart from her beautiful, brand new toilet seat.


	3. the last two times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today marks a year since i first saw ghostbusters! my life hasn't been the same since. #grateful

Erin had been seeing the same psychiatrist for well over a decade. The practice suited her: the patients all knew that the others were in for some reason or another, that many of them were weird deep down, but during their time in the waiting room, they acted as normal as possible. They wore outfits like Erin did, featuring a lot of tweed and linen, and patiently pretended to read the magazines laid out before them. Erin admitted to herself that she didn’t always enjoy this sort of posturing, but the abnormality of her job ensured that few people saw her quite like her fellow patients might.

Erin had been doing a lot of thinking lately. Following what she liked to call the “renovations” on her home, she wondered if she couldn’t be doing more to make her life a bit more exciting, a bit more livable. She had been on the same drug cocktail because they stabilized her, both mentally and emotionally. Gone were the fleeting emotions of college, the attraction to danger. Of course, she had a tiny bit of recklessness left, but she had carefully selected her career because it felt dangerous without actually threatening her any harm. After all, the monsters she worked with had feelings too, and they were quite careful in their interactions with the crew.

Specifically, having Jillian in her life now reminded her of a certain girlfriend she had in undergrad. Alex had been very similar, at least at first; when she had an idea of something she wanted to do, she didn’t let it go. Initially, Erin welcomed her suggestions. She enjoyed finding new things to do, and her girlfriend’s suggestions were often just batshit enough that they could come dangerously close to getting hurt without anything bad happening. Alex was a riot, but she wasn’t one for settling down. Erin was. She’d spent so much of her life making impulsive decisions that when it came time to start making adult choices, she decided to abandon her former lifestyle in favour of one that was as dull as possible.

The drugs helped, a lot, but sometimes she found herself longing for the days where she could ride around a parking lot in a hastily constructed bumper cart. She was, she supposed, generally satisfied with her life, but the passion was hardly there anymore.

Until she met Jillian.

Erin decided to go off her meds. She explained her reasoning to the doctor as best she could (which wasn’t particularly well), but ultimately, they both understood that this was Erin’s decision, and if she wanted to go back on, she could. With directions to follow the weaning schedule and call if her symptoms became unmanageable, Erin left the office, head held high.

And there she was.

She couldn’t help but wonder if the woman seated in front of her was merely an apparition. Could someone start having withdrawal hallucinations without having actually withdrawn yet? Was this a placebo? Had she made the wrong decision?

Only time could answer the last question, but the rest were answered when the would-be spectre opened up her mouth.

“Dr. Gilbert!” she called out. “How perfectly lovely to see you!”

Erin had made a pact with herself. Once she was safely off her meds – so, by the end of the month, hopefully – and had found stability again, she could talk to Jillian. Until then, she didn’t want to do anything rash.

“It’s nice to see you too,” she said, tentative as ever. “What brings you in?”

The way Jillian conducted herself lent itself to several suspicions, but it seemed impolite to assume. After all, this was a woman who wore a unicorn horn and a pair of rainbow overalls with only a neon orange bra underneath to a stuffy psychiatrist’s office.

“Oh, y’know, just the quotidian shit that brings a person down,” Jillian smiled ear to ear.

“Understood,” Erin said, understanding if Jillian wanted to be discreet. “But why this office in particular?”

“Well,” Jillian mused, “the website made it seem exactly like the sort of practice which a tweed suit wearing professional might frequent.”

“Guilty as charged,” Erin laughed, not sure whether to be flattered, concerned, or both. Just a few moments ago, her answer had been crystal clear in her mind. Let me know when you change your mind ran through her head. She was, in fact, trying to change her entire lifestyle for this woman. So why was she suddenly hesitant?

It was just a bit too much to process, frankly. 

Finally, she made up her mind. “I’ll see you around, Jillian,” she announced, more to herself than the woman standing opposite her.

“Let me know when you change your mind,” Jillian called out once again, taking note of the fact that Erin Gilbert, PhD, had addressed her by her first name. Surely she had changed her mind, Jillian decided; there could be no other explanation. She made Erin laugh; she made her smile. What could be keeping her from assenting now?

***

Erin still wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. It had been three hours since she’d last seen her, and yet she already regretted saying goodbye again. Surely the amount of times they could run into each other was dwindling, now; after all, Erin didn’t go to all that many places in general. It wasn’t like Jillian could turn up at her workplace or apartment, after all. This worried Erin, if she was being honest with herself. What if the universe had grown impatient; if it had given them all the opportunities they would ever have? And so she decided that, if in a new location, she ran into Jillian again, she’d agree to a date. One date. That would be it. And if, somehow, by the end of the date, she seemed even more appealing? Erin allowed that she may just let herself be wooed.

She went about completing her normal evening routine, but try as she might, she simply couldn’t get to sleep. She was excited, in a way: She had a feeling that she was going to run into Jillian again tomorrow and frankly, she couldn’t wait.

Finally, she decided that there was no point in just lying there trying and failing to sleep. In her frustration, she tried to find an Ambien, but the bottle was empty. Her apartment was completely out of wine, and she couldn’t bring herself to have any of the liquor she’d received as gifts over the years.

For the first time in a long time, she was conscious of how fucking lonely her apartment felt. Or, rather, how fucking lonely she was. She needed something to do, and so resigned herself to the idea of going to the grocery store to get some beer.

Truthfully, Erin felt ready to pass out. Physically, she was truly exhausted. And yet, her heart raced on and on until she could think of nothing except Jillian’s smiling face.

She drank a Monster and headed out the door as quickly as she could. She just wanted some sleep, dammit.

At the store, she found her favourite beer and brought a six pack up to the checkout. She was halfway out the door before she noticed her favourite familiar sight.

“Come here often?” Jillian leaned against the storefront.

“Jillian,” Erin exhaled. And in that moment, in the split-second she had to decide what to do next, she chose to do exactly what she thought was appropriate.

She put the beer on the ground.

She tucked her hair behind her ear.

And she announced, “I’ve changed my mind.”

Jillian knew that this was a lie, because Erin’s mind never needed to be changed. She had known what she’d had to do from the first time she lay eyes on Jillian, and all she’d required to get there was a bit of coaxing.

“Damn right you have,” Jillian replied, low and smooth. And before either of them truly knew what was happening, they were kissing hungrily, hands buried in each other’s hair.

When they broke apart, Erin had just one question left.

“Well? Are you following me home or what?”

It should probably go without saying that yes, she most certainly was. After all, how else could she plan where to put the flamingos?


End file.
